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AVEC Welcomes Bethel to the Family

May 7th, 2014

May 6, 2014, marked the last day of a long history of service to Bethel by Bethel Utilities Corp. BUC was Bethel's electric utility for more than 50 years and has provided some of the most reliable power in Alaska.

AVEC is proud to continue the excellent service Bethel has come to expect from BUC's dedicated employees. All 16 BUC employees in Bethel became AVEC employees on May 7.

AVEC will continue to operate the Bethel business office at its current location through July, when we move to a new space in the renovated Alaska Commercial store. We will be in the AC annex and will offer all of AVEC's state-of-the-art services, not only to our new Bethel members, but also to our members from AVEC communities across the state.

In addition to the office, which will be open during regular business hours of Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a payment kiosk will be accessible during regular AC store hours. The kiosk will accept payments from consumers made with cash, check, or credit/debit cards. Credit and debit card payments are only available for residential accounts.

Bills issued by BUC for April's electric consumption should be mailed to AVEC or delivered to the AVEC (formerly BUC) office in Bethel. The Bethel office will start to accept credit cards on May 7, the day we officially take over. We hope that Bethel consumers will have online access to their accounts by the end of May.

While we plan for a completely trouble-free transfer in May, that may be too much to expect. We ask for your patience and understanding as we complete the extremely complicated transfer of BUC operations to AVEC.

We welcome our new members in Bethel and hope members in our Yukon-Kuskokwim communities will stop by our Bethel office and meet our staff members. We know all of our villages will see benefits well into the future from the economies of scale we gain with the addition of the largest community in western Alaska.